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Chapter 3: A Grand Approach to Reality

The second enemy is the military. It prepares especially for death, it has no other function. It prepares for war and destruction. And how much money is spent on it?

Just in America, Ronald Reagan has spent two trillion dollars on military build-up. Two trillion dollars! One thousand million dollars make one billion dollars; one thousand billion dollars make one trillion dollars. One million dollars are equal to fifteen crore rupees.The proposed military budget for this year in the US is three hundred billion dollars.

Churches own one hundred and two billion dollars worth of land. The government subsidizes the church with at least one hundred billion dollars a year.

And this is only America. The case is similar in every country - while the people are dying of starvation. These churches talk about charity, and they are accumulating billions and trillions of dollars.

President George Bush was very angry with me because of my Rolls Royces. But my ninety-three Rolls Royces cost only five point three million dollars - and I was not the owner of them, they belonged to different people who had donated to a trust.

George Bush, I have come to know from very intimate friends of the White House, was very much against me. Again and again he was criticizing me: “The world is poor. Why does this man have ninety-three Rolls Royces?” As he became president, a special Lincoln Continental limousine was made for him. It took three years to make it, and six hundred thousand dollars; and he forgot all about what he had been saying about me.

I want to remind him, “You have still a second-rate car.” My sannyasin, Avirbhava, has a Rolls Royce here for me. It is the greatest Rolls Royce that has ever been made by the Rolls Royce company.

George Bush is going to spend thirty million dollars on his inauguration as president - and this same fellow was talking about my Rolls Royces. And they were not mine. I don’t own anything; I have enough friends around the world to take care of me.

I had allowed my friends to make a trust with those ninety-three Rolls Royces. Even the president of the Rolls Royce company came to see, because I was the greatest customer in their whole history; never before, never after, is anybody going to have ninety-three Rolls Royces!

What was the purpose of it? Because I used only one Rolls Royce; I never went to see the garage which the Rolls Royce president went to see. He could not believe his eyes: that my cars were kept in a condition that even his new cars could not compete with, because they were given out of love, and taken care of out of love.